Brains vs hearts
by G.I.Jackie
Summary: Set in a world where life becomes survival. What happens when two siblings have to learn to trust others? Will a certain red head let a certain golden boy break through her barriers? Or will she continue to fight for survival alongside her brother while humanity continues to crumble? Rated T for language and gruesome scenes. Disclaimer: The characters from T.M.I. are borrowed.
1. Chapter 1

"Come on Clare!" Jonathan hissed as he lifted a wooden plank blocking a doorway up for me to crawl under.

I rolled my eyes as I quietly dropped on all fours and inched towards the opening. We had knocked on the door, waiting for the sound of hungry flesh eaters but all we heard was the wind as it rustled the trees nearby.

The house I was entering looked like it hadn't been touched in years! Hopefully that meant it had supplies and other stuff we could take.

Yep, this was the life of any sane human being.

Three years ago, a virus outbreak spread throughout the whole country. The virus turned many, many people into monsters. Creatures that were mainly only heard in horror stories or movies were now a reality.

Zombies. They were of course gruesome and horrible to even look at. They were literally walking corpses, except none were skeletons...yet. They had rotted faces, some even had no eyes so they had to depend on sound to get their next meal. They were slow, but silent. On a night like this, their low hungry filled moans could easily be lost in the sound of the tree's rustling or abandoned houses creaking.

Me and my brother, Jonathan have been on our own since our parents became infected and turned. I was thirteen when the spread of the virus started, my brother was only fifteen. When I was fifteen and my brother just passed his seventeenth birthday, we became orphans in a deadly world.

We had gathered a few weapons since life turned into survival. We only used guns or weapons with ammo if we were desperate. We mainly stuck to re-usable weapons like my brother's sword which he had ever since he was twelve and my katana which I found a year ago in an abandoned flat the owner clearly hadn't been in for a while.

Now we travel through forests, no destination in mind. We avoid populated areas like cities so we won't run into zombies, but we have encountered them plenty of times in the forests.

We also avoided living humans as well. Not because we didn't want to help them survive, but because when you're in a large group, there is always going to be arguments and in times like these...some people lose their sanity.

A month or two after Jonathan and I had been on our own, we encountered another group that invited us to join them. We were too grief stricken, tired and hungry to decline. Yet adrenaline pumped through our bodies when we found ourselves locked up in cages about to be butchered for a meaty dinner.

Yeah...they were cannibals.

Jonathan and I barely escaped with our lives, luckily we kept our limbs, aside from the tip of my right baby finger. Jonathan had been stabbed in the leg, which I bandaged as best I could with the supplies we had. He now limped when he walked, but it didn't slow him down.

We killed at least twelve of them together, and after our wounds healed enough to scab over, we traveled together never trusted other human groups or even talked by joining other humans.

We lived in a world where you had to be smart to survive. Where one mistake could be the last thing you do before you lose your mind and started craving human flesh.

My brother and I look out for each other. We work well together. We only carried necessities like weapons, food and if we had any, a small change of good clothes for when the ones we wore became useless.

Food was a major issue. We hunted animals using the ammo weapons we had, like a bow that had belonged to our father. The arrows luckily could be reused if we found them. We had six all together.

Animals were risky meals. We weren't sure if they could become infected, but from what we saw was the animals avoided zombies. Maybe they could smell death off them and it frightened them off or maybe it was just in their nature to run away from all types of predators.

It took a while for Jon and I to hunt animals by ourselves. When our parents were alive, our father was the hunter. He showed us how to use our weapons and he hunted deer. The day we were attacked by a horde of zombies, our Jonathan was arguing with our father. They were arguing about Jonathan having to go with him on hunts to help provide for the family.

I was there and I watched as a bloody and raw hand wrapped itself around my father's neck, tearing his throat out in the blink of an eye. Our mother screamed as she tried to fend off the zombie, only it wasn't alone. We were surrounded by a dozen zombies and our mother was grief striken as she stabbed blindly with her small knives at zombies as tears welled in her eyes.

Jonathan grabbed the bow and quiver of arrows lying next to our father. Blood was spilling out from his neck, but he was still twitching. I looked from the bloody mess that was our father to our mother only to see her fall to the ground with two zombies on top of her.

I had screamed and felt tears in my eyes spilling freely as I grabbed the small knife I was given as a weapon. I started running towards the hoard of zombies that were tearing my mother to shreds. Jonathan had seen what I was about to do, and caught me before I reached the horde and began dragging me away from the scene, the zombies ignored us as they fought over my mother and father who had stopped screaming.

Just before they were out of sight, I could have sworn I saw my father move.

After that, Jonathan and I found a lot of cabins and such in the forests or houses that were just outside the edge of the forest. Some were ransacked but any supplies were helpful. We never came across people living in the houses so no one was there to tell us off for stealing.

The cabin I was entering on hands and knees was the first shelter we came across in two weeks. It was spring time which wasn't too bad but it was still cold at night. Especially when we couldn't light a fire as it would be like a beacon for any zombie, telling them food was served.

I don't know where we're walking to, or why, but I don't want to die. I don't want to become a meal. I want to get the hell out of this place with my brother and live a normal life. I wanted to go back to a time where zombies were just horrors seen in movies or read in books. Not a reality.

Whoever started the zombie virus or had any part to play in the way life was now, I just want to tell them from the bottom of my uncontaminated heart...

'Fuck you.'


	2. Chapter 2

I pushed myself through the small gap Jonathan had cleared for me. I surveyed the area, my katana out and awaiting any zombies that might possibly be hiding in the shadows.

It's odd for a nice cabin to be borderd up and no one inside.

"Well?" Jonathan whispered. He hated sending me into possible danger. But he couldn't fit in the gap and I wanted a roof over my head before I fell asleep.

I pressed myself against the door and whispered back "I'm going to check for a window you can climb in." then quietly crept further into the house.

I hated when it was so quiet. It made me jumpy and anxious. I could hears sounds like moans, but couldn't tell if I had company or the wind was trying to blow the house away.

I entered the first room on my right, which turned out to be a living room. It was covered in dust and grime. Pictures hung on the wall, a television sat in the corner and I could clearly see a dark splotch on the rug that didn't match the design.

The windows to the living room were bordered up. Onto the next room.

I entered a kitchen that had a fowl smell. The source of which was the rotting food in the open fridge. Looking around the room, I saw a window that wasn't bordered up. When I inspected it, I realised why.

The cabin was on a small cliff. The window showed a porch which was only accessible through a sliding door barricaded with a lot of wooden furniture.

Luckily I had rope in my bag which should be long enough to pull Jon up. I quickly and silently walked back to the door where the silhouette of Jon was easily seen. He was shifting from one foot to the other.

"Jon?"

"Any luck?" He asked. Relief and worry clear in his voice.

There's a window in the back that's not barricaded. It's on a cliff though. I have a rope which should be able to reach you and I can pull you in." I whispered back.

Jon was silent for a moment before I heard him sigh. "Okay. I'll meet you back there." and his silhouette was gone.

I quietly and quickly raced back to the window, took off the rucksack on my back that contained all of my stuff and found the rope. I had no idea on where I could tie it. I would have to tie it around my middle and hope I didn't slice in two.

Taking a deep breath, I quickly did a knot my dad taught me before throwing the other end out the window which I had to pry open.

A minute or two later, I felt it tug. Using all my strength, I pulled the rope which hopefully held my brother at the other end. We couldn't call to one another as it would notify any near by zombies.

After what felt like hours, I finally saw a hand reach the windowsill. I ran forward and gripped the surprising warm hand and pulled. I felt instant relief when the familiar dirty white hair of my brother came into view.

It took a while to pull his whole body through the window, but when we were finally both in the cabin, we sank to the ground and breathed deeply from the excursion.

"We're going to have to start eating better Clare. It's ridiculous how weak we are." Jonathan said after catching his breath.

I shook my head, frowning when my long and dirty red curls hit my face. Time for a hair cut.

"What can we do Jon? It's not like there's a buffet ready for us behind every tree!" I said, my voice still low as we had yet to explore the cabin.

We had came across deer plenty of times, but we caught one and took whatever meat we could off the body. We didn't take too much meat with us because apparently, zombies liked animal meat as well and could follow it easily. So we had to survive on a small amount of meat a long with whatever vegetation we could find that was edible.

He took a deep sigh before replying. "Maybe...we could...go into a city and-"

"What?! Jon, that's suicide!"

Jon looked at me with sad green eyes. The same green eyes we both inherited from our mother. "Clare...we're not living. We're walking aimlessly in a forest, going no where and starving ourselves. We barely survived winter and now we're both incredibly weak. We need to take a risk."

"Yeah, but-" I stopped speaking, my ears perking up. "Did you hear that?" I whispered.

Jonathan frowned before his expression morphed to annoyance as the sound of hungry growls came from below us.


End file.
